Family

John and I moved to Colorado February 2007, three months after we got married. We loved living in Colorado, we loved Fort Collins a lot. We really enjoyed the little community of friends that we met there through church, through Starbucks and through my second job out there. However, we really started to miss our family!

We then felt a nudge towards Redding, as we started to look at what might be next for us. One factor that definitely drew us was that my brother and his family were here, and we were so excited at the thought of being around family!

We now get to live close to our family (literally - we're within a five minute walk of their house) and have dinners together, go away for weekends together and see them multiple times a week. I have been especially blessed to get to see my nieces lots. After spending three years or more away from our nieces and nephews, we have definitely missed being part of their growing-up and seeing their little personalities develop. It has been a pleasure to be around Emma and Adi. They light up my world when they see us coming over and run out and give us big hugs. Or choose to sit next to me and snuggle when we watch a movie. We are so lucky to be able to get to connect with them and we are taking as much advantage of that fact as we can, as we don't know when we might be moved onto the next thing, the next location.

I snapped a few shots of them the other night as we went over for dinner. They were playing outside making a cake out of mud, leaves, grass and berries, and happily let me snap some pictures. They have very patiently been willing to let me practice my photography on them and it has been happy to take gorgeous photos as they are so cute and smiley! Here are some of the photos:

March

For me, the month of March always remind me of my mum. Her birthday was March 19th, and in England, Mother's Day is in March. Her favourite flower was the daffodil and, if you know anything about flowers, you'll know that these tend to bloom in March, and in England, they're everywhere! Not just in the flower shops or supermarket but they grow wild everywhere. Officially you're not supposed to pick them but everybody does. You can guess that for my mum's birthday and for Mother's Day, she always had plenty of wild daffodils that her kids picked for her on the way home from school or on the way back from a friend's house. Daffodils now have a special place in my heart as well, as they will always remind me of my mum and her strength, silliness, loyalty, love and caring mother-heart.

Here's to my mum, Francine Bonjour, and to never letting her memory fade.

New lens

After taking the photography class (can you tell how influential this was by how many blog posts I've written about it?), I realised that it was time to step up my game a little bit and I started looking at lenses. Learning how important a low aperture can be for portrait photography, as it increases depth of field and creates more blurriness behind the subject, I started looking into a lens that would have a low aperture. The lower the aperture, the larger the opening and the more light can come through, which means you can take photos easier at low light without a flash. I was pleased to find one with an aperture of 1.8, whereas my current one only went down to 4.5.

I was even more pleased to find a reasonably priced lens, as I definitely didn't have money to invest into anything pricey. After researching reviews, we decided to sell our point-and-shoot Nikon in order to pay for the lens. A week later, the camera was sold and the lens was on its way!

I am now the proud owner of a DT 1.8f 50mm SAM lens. John and I went to the park over the weekend and I grabbed the camera so I could test it out in natural lighting. We had fun with the lens and here are some of the photos from our walk:

Final Photography Class Shoot

For our final shoot, a couple of weeks ago, we did an outdoor shoot with natural lighting. This was great for me as this is what I do with my shoots for my business. She took us to a great area behind the church and had provided us with lots of models and props in order to have fun with the shoots.

I definitely learnt how to be more comfortable with the subject and that interacting with the model resulted in a much better picture (otherwise, they looked bored or awkward - a lot of them were high school students!) I was able to look at more details in the shoot as well as overall poses and positions, which for me is harder when there is just one person in the shoot as opposed to a couple or whole family! It continued to give me ideas and experience in this area of portrait photography.

Here are some of my favourites:

Shahala Shoot

I did my first maternity shoot last weekend with lovely Shahala. It was not hard to take beautiful photos of her! I ventured down-town to try some new spots but only found a few that I really liked.

On another note, I was able to purchase a new lens (after selling our trusty but unused Nikon point and shoot). I will soon be the proud owner of a 1.8f, 50mm SAM DT Lens and I am excited to get almost two weeks in French Polynesia as the team photographer to practice with it!

Here are my favourites from the shoot: